HP-UX Workload Manager User's Guide

Introduction
What is HP-UX Workload Manager?
Chapter 142
Environment (VSE), WLM integrates virtualization
techniques—including partitioning, resource management, clustering,
and utility pricing resources—and links them to the SLOs and business
priorities. WLM enables a virtual HP-UX server to grow and shrink
automatically based on the demands and SLOs for each application it
hosts. By optimizing resource utilization in accord with SLOs and
business priorities, WLM helps enterprises achieve greater return on
their IT investment while ensuring that end-users receive the service
and performance levels they expect. Some key uses of HP-UX WLM
include:
• Using excess server capacity by consolidating multiple applications
on fewer servers while ensuring that mission-critical applications
still get the resources they need in times of peak demand
• Automatically re-allocating system resources in response to changing
priorities or conditions, package movement in a cluster, resource
demand, and application performance
• Automating the deployment of reserve capacity so that customers
pay for what they need when they need it
• Enabling higher utilization in clusters by enabling you to define,
monitor, and enforce SLOs when a failure occurs, causing a workload
to fail over a server or partition already running other workloads
You can use WLM within a whole server that can be clustered in an HP
Serviceguard high availability cluster, Extended Campus Cluster,
Metrocluster, or Continentalcluster. You can also use WLM on an HP
Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) Host and within any
individual Integrity VM (guest). You can use WLM within nPartitions
and virtual partitions as well as across partitions.
WLM is most effective managing applications that are CPU-bound. It
adjusts the CPU allocation of the group of processes that constitute a
workload, basing adjustment on current needs and performance of that
workload’s applications.
CPU resources can be allocated in shares (portions or time slices) of
multiple cores or, when using WLM partition management or PSET
management, in whole cores. WLM supports the logical CPU
(Hyper-Threading) feature, which is available starting with HP-UX 11i
v3 (B.11.31) for processors designed to support the feature and that have
the appropriate firmware installed. A logical CPU is an execution thread
contained within a core. Each core with Hyper-Threading enabled can
contain multiple logical CPUs. WLM supports the Hyper-Threading